


Vengeance

by BorosPaladin



Series: Nova Alabastra [8]
Category: Kingdoms of Amalur
Genre: Court of Winter, Gen, House of Vengeance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-31
Updated: 2014-10-31
Packaged: 2018-02-23 09:21:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2542391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BorosPaladin/pseuds/BorosPaladin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A Dokkalfar scholar visits Nova Alabastra with a single question: What is the nature of the House of Vengeance?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Vengeance

**Author's Note:**

> This is a dark piece. It is a very dark piece. It is intended to make you feel despair. You have been fairly warned. If it does not succeed, please comment so that it can be improved.

“So, mortal, you want to know what it’s like to be in the House of Vengeance?” The Fae woman chuckled in the dark room as dim torchlight ricocheted off the cold iron shackles littering the torture chamber. “Well, at least, you certainly _think_ you do.

“Before you can understand the House of Vengeance, you must understand the Winter Fae. Understand this: Without the House of Sorrows and their delving, we would have no court. Everyone and everything that entered our lands would die, whether horrifically, slowly, or brutally. We would not know any successes at all without delving, and though few in this time will admit it we Winter Fae owe all to the Weeping King.

“Fae are not like mortals. We do not understand work, sleep, eating, death, nor much else that mortals live. The Summer Fae are growth, much akin to the mortal need to build and grow and expand; even without help you understand them in some simple way. This is why you came to me, when I doubt you went to the Summer Fae in the same way.

“Imagine a moment, mortal. Imagine that everything you had ever done across your entire life failed. Not merely your big, great goals, no, everything from your trek to Alabastra down to when you attempted to buy a meal in Rathir and couldn’t find your favorite dish anywhere because simply no one had it and you could not understand how. Imagine every single moment of your life being utter failure with no hope of anything else ever occurring. Imagine knowing that when you return to your nice, comfortable study, it has been sacked, and not only can you find nothing useful you find your favorite inkwell smashed and your mattress filled with glass shards. Imagine that even with a firsthand account of the Winter Fae you are completely rejected by all your peers, laughed out to the point where no scholar will ever take you seriously again. Imagine me telling you that all of this will come to pass if you do not leave right now, but then when you arrive every aspect of the Klurikon swamp and the caverns of Alabastra oppose you and the Mel Senshir gate guards deny you entry and it is days before you can beg your way onto a ship after having lost what little you had just attempting to survive the journey and then when you arrive the scene is infinitely worse than you imagined from my description, that there is nothing left for you but death.

“But then, someone will surely care for you, right? Hardly. In your poor state, you are too dirty and ruined to be believed that you ought to live up Spire-side, no, even your appeals to your old friends fall on deaf ears. You could try living in the Wending, yes, but you don’t know them, and your clothes are finer than anything down there and even those few scraps are taken from you by those you thought you could trust. You are rejected by everyone in the city, from the highest peak of nobility to the priestesses of Lyria to the merchants of the Pryderi to the beggars in the Wending. You seek shelter outside the city, but you cannot manage to steal anything and demonstrate your worth to the Travelers. They might keep you for a time out of pity, but you are worthless even to these and sent into the wilds, where no Fae sprite or wild creature or even the plants show you any mercy at all, even shade is near impossible to find. Imagine that you cannot even find a soft patch of dirt to sleep in, you cannot even be well-rested.

“But, even with all of this gone, you still have your health, don’t you? Oh, no, as you were rushing through Klurikon you come down with some unknown disease, gradually weakening you, causes small pustules to sprout across your body and your muscles to weaken. Eventually the pustules become boils and open sores that never close. But this is hardly the worst of what has taken hold of you. You have nearly no food, and what muscle you have wears away in your starvation and your skin begins peeling away. Well before this disease begins to kill you, your skin begins sloughing off in endless layers, making you unrecognizable even as a person, much less as an intelligent scholar. You live on random bits of dirty vegetation, what little your falling-out teeth can chew without cutting into your mouth, but even that can barely be forced down your dry, cracking throat.

“Now imagine this being the definition of your entire life. There is no hope for you; all you do crumbles to dust even before it leaves your hands. You have never been anything and will never be anything. You have nothing. Not for the mere moments of this imagining but all day, every day, every week of every month of every year of your entire life, from the moment of your birth until the moment of your death, that there is no escape, no release from this pain but the hollow call of the grave.

“Now, imagine that you are no longer mortal, but Fae. You are not bound to this torture for one mere lifetime, no. You know that even death grants no relief, as you will simply be reborn to experience this again. You have nothing, you are nothing, you and you will never change. And not only this, but what life you have seems to become worse with every turn of the cycle. First you die, a ruined scholar. Next, your torment is worsened by poison. Another time, you attempt to fight back but are only further beaten by those around you. Another, you are raped repeatedly. Another, you give up and do nothing, and the vultures come to eat you before you even die. And on it goes, on and on and on until you lose all sense of time, you could not have counted all of the cycles you have lived no matter how hard you tried.

“One day, you are granted the gift of being Delved. It stops. No longer are you condemned, but you are still bound to this death, knowing that when you have simply this one chance to become something, anything, more than you currently are. But this is not hope, no, you do not get to grow. That is utterly beyond you.

“So you cannot grow, but no longer are you so completely bound to torment and death. What do you do?

“Most simply embraced this chance, doing everything they could to emulate the growth that was truly beyond them. These formed the Court of Winter, rushing to be anything other than their tortured past selves.

“For some, the most critical thing to do was to go and bring as many out of their torment as possible and honor the world and magics that allowed you to be anything more than doomed. These Fae formed the House of Sorrows, eternally grateful to those who saved them.

“For others, the fact that they could not grow was a sign of superiority, a clear indication that no one could be more superior than they were. Why else could they not grow, indeed, than that there was no more growth possible for anyone anywhere? This is the founding principle of the House of Pride.

“There were few of us others at first. Understand, mortal, some of us _remembered_. We honored our time of endless torment rather than disregarding it as the others did. We did not forget those who injured us, and we did not forgive. Rather, we insisted that those who kicked us while we were down and beat us while we were already dead be punished for their crimes. We became hunters, the fighting arm of the Court of Winter, but we were scattered for many cycles, fighting our individual crusades rather than banding together, joining arms only when the Court itself was threatened.

“But then you mortals came. Mortals were new, not a part of the cycle. Worse, you threatened us and sought to drive us from our homes, not understanding our places and twisting blocks of earth into your unnatural shapes. Long after we had put an end to old wounds, you came and oppressed us in ways you cannot imagine; you reopened ancient scars and brought fresh blood to flow where it had been dry for centuries. It was because of this reawakened horror that we formed the House of Vengeance, and it was only by near-immediate decree of the High King of Winter that we did not march on your people. We held back our blades, saving your people from utter destruction. Rather than the grim reapers of your kind, we forged ourselves into paragons of a dark sort of honor, honing and perfecting our rage and our blades. What you mortals have a short time to practice, any one of us has had many cycles to master – and that was before the House, before we turned our brutal vengeance into an art. We were told not to bring this winter, this perfect storm, to your cities and castles.

“And now, perhaps you understand why the House of Vengeance joined the Tuatha. Long had we sought to make war upon your kind; Gadflow’s invitation was akin to a volcano erupting its long-held wrath. I was only not part because I denied Gadflow’s authority; usurping is something you mortals do, not Fae. Even more than the coming of mortals, a Fae acting as a mortal, Gadflow’s usurpation, was the herald of the end of the Fae. We do not know what will come of those who remain, we Winter Fae who never joined the Tuatha. Perhaps we are dead already, remaining only to watch as we fade. But we are still Vengeance, and we will still crush those who attempt to hasten our end.

“You have what you came for, mortal. Now leave, before I decide the kill would be too delicious to deny.”

I began to get up, but weights slowed me and rattled. I had been shackled! I admit, I had been unnerved by her speech, but no fear compares to the sheer terror of the realization that no matter how hard I tried to flee, she would easily catch me – I lived only by her permission, by the power of her cackling echoing over the rattling of my chains as I struggled to run from the building. I did not even slow until I reached my camp, and I did not know peace of mind until I had returned, the shackled in my bag, to Rathir.

Even now, though, it is as though she is watching me from every shadow. It has become an odd sort of peace, knowing that she will kill me when this is done; there is comfort in my certain death.


End file.
